Michael Kriesel

Michael Kriesel

BIO:Winner of North American Review’s 2015 Hearst Award and past president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Michael Kriesel’s poems and reviews have appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Antioch Review, Rattle, Small Press Review, Library Journal, North American Review, and The Progressive. His manuscript Forgiving the Grass was a finalist in the ABZ Press 2014 First Poetry Book Contest. He’s served on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and as Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Conference Coordinator and has won the Wisconsin People & Ideas poetry contest, both the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Muse Prize and its Triad Award, and the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. He’s been a featured poet of the Great Lakes Writers Festival, and has judged the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring Poetry Competition and the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s annual contest. Books include Chasing Saturday Night: Poems about Rural Wisconsin, Whale of Stars, Moths Mail the House, and Feeding My Heart to the Wind: Selected Short Poems. He has a B.S. in Literature from the University of the State of New York, and was a newspaper and TV journalist in the navy. He collects 1940s comics and carnival glass, and works as an elementary school janitor and as a security guard.